Posts Tagged ‘SC’

Forty-two years ago, textile trader Subhash Chandra Agarwal, then an engineering student, was miffed with a Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) bus conductor who refused to give him a ticket for a 20 paise journey.

So, he shot off a letter to the editor of the Hindi daily Dainik Hindustan complaining about the misconduct.

“When the letter was published, a DTC van arrived at the college campus. I hid somewhere in the college, fearing the worst. But friends later pulled me out and said the DTC conductor had come to apologise for his misconduct. That’s when I realised the power of taking the initiative and writing.”

That kicked off a habit of writing letters to newspapers—3,699 at last count—and eventually got him into the Guiness Book of Records. When India’s landmark Right to Information (RTI) Act, was passed, Agarwal graduated into filing petitions for records to be made public.

Not that they are sensitive to these things, but the highest court in India has delivered a stinging slap on the menacing faces of the moral police and thought thugs; the connoisseurs who know exactly what we should see, hear, wear, watch, read, write, paint, feel and think.

Or else.

Maqbool Fida Husain‘s Bharat Mata—a 2004 oil-on-canvas painting of a nude woman whose shape mimics the contours of the map of India, with the names of Indian cities written over her body—has been decreed “a work of art” by the Supreme Court of India.

“There are so many such subjects, photographs and publications. Does the sentiment of the petitioner get scandalized by the large number of photographs of erotic sculptures which are in circulation? Will you file cases against all of them?

“What about temple structures?

“It (Husain’s work) is art. If you don’t want to see it, don’t see it. There are so many such art forms in temple structures.”